Dear Dayre,

Today has got to be the longest day ever for team Sydney!

Our day started at 5am.. Yes, I woke up at 5 freaking am (3am in Singapore time): for a trip down to Sydney Fish Market to watch the seafood auction!

PS. The above photo was taken as we left: it was pitch dark when we arrived!w

We were fortunate enough to be given media passes, which allowed us to snap photos within the market, which is generally not permitted.

Now, if I were a regular tourist, I wouldn't have given my shots much thought: how fantastic can you make a fish market look? It just looks blah with grey cement floors, gross looking produce and seafood, and in general just very unattractive for photo-taking.

But here I was on a mission: to take good photos. And I was stumped.

What goes on at the fish market: it's something called a Dutch auction where a huge timer runs on screen and the price for the produce decreases every minute. Instead of shouting about, the buyers just press a button to bid for their produce.

Capturing a beautiful moment is somewhat easy. How can you make a beautiful sunset look bad? Or even a breathtaking landscape.. If you have a decent camera, I dare say you'd probably get passable shots.

But at the fish market, my challenge was to tell a story.

On Yunaidi's advice (he's a photographer with National Geographic Indonesia), he told me to look for the story, and tell it in photos.

I have always taken mindless snapshots, my main purpose to capture beautiful moments of myself, of what's around me.

Now at the fish market, I had to do something complete different: to make a story out of the ordinary.

So I tried to focus on telling stories.. Taking portraits and expressions and people.

I really like how the kids here aren't glued to electronic devices.. They are out and running about and the parents bring them out to explore the city. This kid and his dad was at the fish market and you could see the kid having a really good time!

Inside the auction house where there's lots of action going on, with the market workers wheeling around cartons and cartons of produce.

I tried to frame this shot in a manner that was pleasing to the eye, with the cartons of produce and the path leading up to where the main subject is.

It can be quite tough to get a decent shot because everyone's moving around fast and noones gonna wait and pose for you. But I managed to get one or two shots still.. Which I am really happy about.

My lesson of the day: photography is a lot more than just taking a beautiful shot!

One with some of the friendly staff.

After we completed our rounds at the fish market, it was time for breakfast! Waking up so early does make one hungry.

Douglass (our guide from Destination NSW) brought us to one of the most most popular places for brunch: Bill's!

You have to order the corn fritters, scrambled eggs and the ricotta pancakes!

My favourite big breakfast as usual. Those scrambled eggs were da bomb!

Got our tummies filled and it was time for one of the most exciting thing on our itinerary: helicopter ride!!! 😁😁😁

Team Sydney with the pilots and 'copters!

Here's a video with some footage taken from the copter… It was just beautiful, especially the coastline!

A view with the harbour. Look at all those little boats all lined up like that!

On a lucky day, you might even see whales or a shoal of fish in the ocean!

Now that's what I call a view..

Mr Pilot doing his thang..

The heli ride costs $209 AUD for 20 minutes.. But it was really quite the experience!

All the girls on the trip doing a crazy shot! And that's our guide, Douglass. She is pretty amazing!

View of the Harbour Bridge at night.

The early morning really got me zombie-fied 😴 We had dinner at 6 plus and got back to our hotel before 9pm! Took a nice hot bubble bath and totally crashed for the night! Even fell asleep in the middle of texting YZ >.<